April 6 Bennett Pass - Mt Hood

Jetted up for a quick tour yesterday afternoon.  Meadows was reporting about 30" of new last 3 days.  I think much of that blew off the mountain and sifted down into Bennett Pass.  The trail breaking was GNARLY hard.  My hip flexors are sore today.  Main point of this report though is all the instability I saw on the trail.  I have never seen this in the last 7 years skiing in there.  Small releases were coming down on the trail from the road cut above and it was easy to trigger small slabs below the trail as well.  Crown faces about 14 inches.  I saw tree wells 12-15 feet deep.  Most of the releases were taking place near the trail head where there is more wind exposure from the west.  Further in, there was very little slab formation.  I couldn't make it all the way to the clear cuts so I skied the little hills above the trail.  Not really steep enough to ski that depth of snow, but I did get one major face shot.    :D  It was a good lesson for me that even reliable safe places can become unstable.  There was no sunshine so I don't think this was sun related instability.